AN AMAZING announcement was recently made to the English Press with reference to the resignation, by Dr Aked, of his pulpit ina Presbyterian chapel at San Francisco, and the presidentship of the San Francisco Church Federation. It appears that the Presbyterian Association called the attention of the San Francisco Federation to a sermon preached by Dr Aked, in which he is said to have denied belief in the Immaculate Conception, and on that ground it held that he could no longer be recognised as the official representative of the Evangelical societies of the city. Obviously, the Press Agency has confused the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth, and we are inclined to think that they are not alone in possessing hazy notions on these two distinct articles of belief. More than once in conversation with laymen of the type that is prepared to deliver judgment on any theological proposition . . . we have observed the speakers to be under the impression that the Virgin Birth was made an article of belief when the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was decreed in the last century. So it is not at all surprising that the ludicrous error concerning Dr Aked was repeated in English newspapers, apparently without a shred of suspicion in regard to its accuracy.

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